


To go home

by imsfire



Series: Keeping Faith [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: AU, Angst, F/M, Feels, Friendship, Gen, Jyn has been fighting very hard for the last ten days and is very very tired, OC POV, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Worry, background cassian/jyn - Freeform, filling in a gap in an earlier story, new mother Jyn, prison and liberation, sequel to Keeping Faith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 04:15:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19165618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: In the prison riots and the subsequent rebellion she’d been full of fire, blazingly intense.  But once the good news came, she’d seemed to go out like a candle.Jyn is exhausted, but mercifully not alone, at the liberation of Einithion.





	To go home

**Author's Note:**

> A companion-piece to an earlier AU work, "Keeping Faith", exploring some of Jyn's feelings about being separated from Cassian for so long and how she's had to just get on with it. Fortunately she has friends.  
> A late entry for Day Seven of Week One of Celebrate Rogue One 2019: Jyn and AU of choice.  
> "Keeping Faith" is a personal favourite among my stories and I've wanted for a while to do a follow-up about Jyn's struggle to cope with not knowing whether Cassian was alive or not.

“Be good to get home, huh?  See your near-dear-ones.  Breathe the home air.” Melha pulled her new-to-her shirt over her head, stretching the open neckline wide to get it past her montrals and lekku. “Not that I don’t appreciate all these Repatriations folks are doing for us.  But – yeah.  Home air, huh?”

She hoped she didn’t sound too jovial.  Truth was, the idea was numbing her.  Five years in the cells and suddenly freedom.  Five years of a wooden pallet and a thin blanket at night and a bench in the mill all day; and now she was sleeping on a thick comfy bunk in a college dorm with three of her fellow ex-prisoners, and soon, very soon, she might actually be going back to Shili.  _Home air…_

“Home air,” the Mirialan Potal echoed, with an almost ritual gesture of salutation at the words. “Home air, home soil and water, home salt to my food.  I bless the hope and trust it will be so.” She shook out her scarf and began to fold it into the right shape for the day.

“Guys, I literally cannot wait!” Nassa was working through her hair with a long-tooth comb, easing out the knots. “See my parents again.  Sleep in my own bed.  Being in Uni halls like this for temp housing, it’s really freaking me out, it just brings it all back, you know?  I was halfway through a kriffing literature degree!  I don’t even know if Taris still has a University now.” She teased carefully at a tangle until it uncurled into her fingertips. “Mostly I just wanna see Mamm and Popp again.  They didn’t even know I was alive before yesterday.”

“How about you, _jefa_?” Potal was fastening her head-wrap now, covering her cropped green hair carefully.  She looked over at the last of their group of four, another human woman, sitting on the bottom half of the second bunk. “Bet you’ll be glad to see Baby’s papa soon!”

The fourth woman was breastfeeding.

Her infant had a firm grip on her breast and his eyes were peacefully closed as he suckled.  Like the other three, she wore a clean nearly-new shirt, currently open to the waist.  There were cuts and bruises on her face and arms, and bloodstains on her trousers.  She didn’t answer Potal’s remarks.  Sat looking down at the baby in her arms, her expression unreadable.

It often was, Melha reflected.  In the prison riots and the subsequent rebellion she’d been full of fire, blazingly intense, inspiring confidence in everyone.  But once the news came, the astonishing news that brought eruptions of celebration and hysterical joy, she’d seemed to go out like a candle. 

Einithion was free, they were all free at last.  A second Death Star had been blown to dust and the Imperial Remnant was in full retreat.  And Jyn Erso had folded in on herself as though pole-axed.

Melha prompted her now. “Jyn?  Are you looking forward to going home somewhere?”

She didn’t know much about the woman who’d commanded them briefly in their rising against the guards; beyond her Coruscant accent and fighting ability, and the fact she spoke Huttese and Bocce and some phrases of a very particular dialect of diaspora Alderaanian.  Festi, Jyn called it.

Potal was Aldera-hablante; it was her work with a refugee NGO that had landed her in the prison.  She was the one who’d nicknamed Jyn _jefa_.  It meant chief, commander, boss.  Leader.

They’d all been patting her big belly for luck, the last few months.  No matter how dark the days, a pregnant inmate, a baby to come, was still a sign of light and life, of hope for the future.  And when she’d appeared the day the riots broke out, carrying her new-born son in a body-wrap and wielding a broken bedpost like a truncheon, and said “Let’s do this properly, shall we?”, they’d flocked to her without hesitation.  It was only right to call her their leader; she’d been a guiding light to them all.

Jyn roused herself slowly now.  She looked up from baby Jerón’s dark head and blinked at the three of them.  A smile began to form on her lips and then wavered and sank away.

“Home?” she said. “No, I – I didn’t get a reply.  Not like you, Nassa.  So – don’t know if he knows I’m here.  If he knows I made it…” She looked down again and bit her lip. “Don’t know if he’s alive.”

“Oh, Jyn sweetie,” Nassa had finished her hair and now she plumped down on the mattress beside the other human. “I’m sorry!  I didn’t know!”

“Course you didn’t.” Jyn looked up again.  Reassuring, guarded as ever; her eyes were holding back some hard emotions. “Haven’t talked about it much.  Don’t want to be gloomy.  I told Silune when she was my cell-mate but then –“

Potal made a different ritual gesture.  After a moment Melha recognised and echoed it.  Rest-for-the-dead.  Silune had been executed, three months ago.

“Been trying not to think about it,” Jyn said. “Doesn’t help any, so – yeah.  I hope he’s alright.”

“But you sent a message home?  When we got here and the Reps guys gave you that form?  Right?”

Nassa’s eagerness was just excitement and youth, but Melha could see that Jyn was leaning away from her slightly.  She laid a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Let be, huh, sisterling?”

Potal said “Let’s go save a place in the breakfast line, shall we?  Baby’s still feeding, maybe _la jefa_ wants to be quiet with him.”

Melha was about to go down with them when Jyn stirred out of her melancholy to say “Hey, Mel, stay a moment? – can I borrow one of your pins>  My shirt fastener just came off.”

“Sure.”

She’d swiped a whole shoulderful of commendation pins from the bitchiest of the warders, just for a joke.  Emperor’s  Efficiency Awards Rank 3, Prisoner Motivator Commendation with Gold Circle.  Employee of the Month.  Three of those, the spiteful bantha-cow.  Melha unclipped one now and knelt to lay it beside Jyn on the bed. “Are you okay?  I’m sorry the kid was pushing things a bit.”

“What? – oh, it’s nothing.  Nassa’s alright.  Means well.  She’s only, what, nineteen?  She doesn’t know what you and I and Potal, what we’ve…” Her words trailed off as little Jerón unlatched from her nipple and lay blinking up at her with his huge dark eyes.  “Finished, sweetheart?” The baby blew a bubble at her, waving his tiny hands and feet.  He was just ten days old.  It had been a tumultuous first week of life.

Jyn hoisted him up gently onto her shoulder and rocked him, rubbing his little back. “Shh then, shh my little one.”

“He’s such a bonnie bub,” Melha remarked. “His eyes are beautiful.”

“His papa’s eyes.” Jyn met her gaze; still guarded, but with a wrenching loneliness beneath it. “He’s so like his father.  It hurts to think about if – if he didn’t make it.”

“I can’t imagine how you’ve coped.  You’re so kriffing brave, you rebels.  Force, Jyn, I’m just a thief, you know?  I don’t have your courage.”

Jyn shook her head. “I’m only a thief too, really.  Just, a thief who found herself looking up.  Because someone gave me hope.  I’ve – I’ve coped by looking down again.  Not thinking about things.  Keep my head down.  Just survive.  And that’s not good, I know it’s not.  But I had to, you know?”

“For the baby, yeah.”

“And now I look at him and I see Cassian and I just – I have to hold it inside myself still or I would just scream with it.  The not knowing.  The fear.  That all my hope won’t be enough.  That I’ve kept faith and held on for nothing.  What if he didn’t make it?  I have to contain the feeling or it’d kill me.” She patted her son’s back with a tenderness that seemed even more tragic beside the fear in her words. “He’s my home.  Jerón’s dad.  He’s the person who saved me from never looking up, from being dead inside.  He gave me all his hope like a light and I’ve carried it with his son and _now_ – and I, I don’t know what will - I haven’t let myself think about – but what if – _what if_ –“

She seemed unaware of the tears sliding down her face.  She burped Jerón tenderly with hands that shook. “And even _if_ – I still have to go on, for my son.  Our son.  I know I’d want to die but I can’t, I just can’t –“

“He has to be okay.  Your man,” Melha said.  Helpless at the simple fear in the words she was hearing. 

Jyn went on more calmly after a moment. “He’s a good man, Cassian.  He’s given everything, all of his life, everything of himself.  I feel like - did I ever love him enough, did I ever tell him enough, how much he means to me?  How much he deserves?  And I must say _means_ and _deserves_ , not _meant_ and _deserved_ , because if I let myself think that, even just once, even just to myself, if I use the past tense, it might break me.”

She lowered Jerón and settled him across her lap.  Scrubbed at her face, apparently noticing the wetness there for the first time. “Fuck.  I’m sorry.  What’s wrong with me?  I never do this.”

“Baby hormones,” Melha reminded her. “Having a bub screws with your head.”

She offered the pin again as Jyn fumbled her shirt closed.

“That and having too much time to think, yeah.  All my focus taken away.  Still can’t believe how everything happened so suddenly.  A baby and a rebellion, total fucking mayhem for ten days, boom.” A mirthless laugh. “Not the first time, either.”

She clipped the Employee of the Month pin in place where the missing fastener had been.

“Maybe there’ll be a message from home for you today,” Melha said.  “Where is home, anyway?”

“Don’t know.” Jyn shrugged. “I was stationed at Alliance HQ, so it used to be Hoth, but – well.  That could be why I didn’t get an answer yet.  Only address I could use was ‘Alliance Base One’ but I’ve no idea if there even _is_ a Base One at the moment.”

“It’ll reach someone, for sure.  Somebody’s out there.”

It was meant to be reassuring, but Jyn’s eyes flooded with tears again and she cursed under her breath and swiped at them. “Krif, what’s the _matter_ with me?  Fuck it!”

“You had a baby ten days ago.  You’ve been fighting in an insurrection pretty much ever since when you’re still recovering from childbirth.  Plus hormones.  Plus three hours’ sleep at most before Baby wakes you up again.  Stress, anxiety, breastfeeding, worry; are you really surprised that you’re a bit of a mess?  Here, let me take him so you can get up.” Melha crouched down to lift little Jerón out of his mother’s lap and cradle him. “Come on.  Breakfast.  And then let’s get that transit to the Input Station and see if there’s any progress on getting us home yet, hmm?”

“Wherever home is.” Jyn hauled herself to her feet awkwardly. “How’s his nappy?  I think my pad’s okay for now.”

She still sounded flat and tired, but less despairing.  Even if it was just the instinct to keep going for her kid; well, it had kept her strong through a hell of a lot, in prison and over this last chaotic few days.

“Wherever home is now,” Melha echoed “I make no doubt, you’ll be welcomed and wanted there.  You and little bub here, both.” She patted Jerón’s diaper; it was dry, and he was already closing his eyes, cradled against her shoulder with one fist clamped on her nearest headtail. She dandled him.  He was such a sweetling, and brave as his mama. “Shh, that’s a boy.  _Jefa_ , we’re free.  War’s almost won.  Your man may yet show up.  Where there’s life there’s hope, eh?”

“Rebellions are built on hope,” Jyn said with a sudden wide smile, and another flash of tears coming swift after it.  She wiped clumsily at her eyes. “Ah, fuck.  Breakfast does sound good.  Let’s go.”

She held out her arms for her son.  Melha settled the sleeping child in them, and the three of them went out together to face the new day and their freedom, and the beautiful, fearful hope of peace.


End file.
